Month: November 2016

I have started taking an interest in Cryptocurrency and the fact that it offers a number of advantages over paper based currencies. Unlike paper currencies, which Governments can print at will, Cryptocurrency is restricted which means that the value of these coins increases.

Take Bitcoin, the best known coin, launched in 2008 with a value in 2009 1 BTC = 0.0001 USD and is now currently at $725. Over the years there have been quite large fluctuations :-

June 2010 1 BTC = 0.07 USD

June 2011 1 BTC = 15 USD

June 2012 1 BTC = 7 USD

June 2013 1 BTC = 100 USD

June 2014 1 BTC = 600 USD

June 2015 1 BTC = 220 USD

June 2015 1 BTC = 750 USD

It is interesting to note anyone who has held Bitcoin since the early days has seen a great increase in his asset.. I first came across Bitcoin when I moved to Cyprus in 2013. the Banks shut for days and then restricted both withdrawals and deposit and many people started to use Bitcoin because the banks stole peoples savings. The security with Cryptocurrency protects your holdings and to some extent provides anonymity.

Theft and fraud risks can be quite high when holding Cryptocurrency in online wallets or exchanges and it is recommended that is is best to use mobile wallets or even record you account details on paper. I still have to come to terms with using mobile data and until I learn how to use scan and use QR codes. Individuals cryptocurrencies are digital and cannot be counterfeited or reversed arbitrarily by the sender, as with credit card charge-backs.

One of my pet hates is transaction fees from bank and this is where cryptocurrency comes into its own There aren’t usually transaction fees for cryptocurrency exchanges . Even though there’s no bitcoin/cryptocurrency transaction fee, many expect that most users will engage a third-party service, such as Coinbase, creating and maintaining their bitcoin wallets. These services act like Paypal does for cash or credit card users, providing the online exchange system for bitcoin, and as such, they’re likely to charge fees

Identity theft isa growing concern for example. If you give your credit card to a merchant, you give him or her access to your full credit line, even if the transaction is for a small amount. Credit cards operate on a “pull” basis, where the store initiates the payment and pulls the designated amount from your account. Cryptocurrency uses a “push” mechanism that allows the cryptocurrency holder to send exactly what you wants to the merchant or recipient with no other information.

Decentralization means the network operates on a user-to-user (or peer-to-peer) basis. The forms of mass collaboration this makes possible are just beginning to be investigated.

Since cryptocurrency is not bound by the exchange rates, interest rates, transactions charges or other charges of any country; therefore it can be used at an international level without experiencing any problems. This, in turn, saves lots of time as well as money on the part of any business which is otherwise spent in transferring money from one country to the other. Cryptocurrency operates at the universal level and hence makes transactions quite easy. There is no other electronic cash system in which your account isn’t owned by someone else.

Since my seasonal job is coming to an end I am taking stock of my financial situation and looking for way to reduce my spending. During the past year I have been teaching my wife how to control how she spends the income from her own part time job.

I used to use Quicken but when I changed my operating system to Linux, I was forced to change to Moneydance, both system are fairly similar and provide ways to control budgets and track expenditure by categories. I am generally responsible for all general bills including my car costs, with my wife responsible for her sons expenditure plus supporting her family in the Philippines and her car costs. We both are responsible for saving.

We have a mixture of Joint accounts, a business account and our own savings accounts. This year I opened a number of additional accounts to cover house insurance, car insurance, road tax and property tax in the Philippines. The additional saving accounts provide a way of saving money , rather than paying the services on a monthly basis with includes interest ,we renew on a yearly basis which saves us money for those accounts which do not allow interest free monthly payment.

I have even set up a number of automated bank transfers which distribute our income a couple of days after it is received into our various saving account, they only earn a few pence in interest but the bigger saving is being in a position in future years to pay upfront and not pay interest. With interest rates expected to rise next year, this will save you money.

I have been analysing my business costs which involve purchasing products in $’s and selling in £’s with exchange rates fluctuating due to Brexit and Trump. If I use my UK debit card to purchase products I am faced with an additional charge of £11-12 and an exchange rate that favours the bank.

However if I use the services of Transferwise who I have used for many years to send money to the Philippines the exchange rate cost are more reasonable . For example they would charge £2.28 and a competitive exchange rate saving me about £10 in every transaction.

Now I do operate an account in the USA, which also has a $ debit card, if I do not charge $250 a month to my card the bank will charge me $16 per month as account charges. Now you can perhaps see that with a combination of using my US debit card to purchase products and transferring funds to my USA account I can save £10 + $16 (12.9) or around £22-32 per month.

One other way to earn money we earn money is with a Tesco Club card, collecting points when buying petrol, food, household items and other items online with Tesco direct. We earn £15-20 per month in cash back as well as additional points and offers.

Saving rates are at an all time low at the moment and to be honest its hardly worth leaving it in the bank, which is why I am using some of my savings and pumping it through my business to provide a better return, with the changes I am putting in place from above, my profits are set to grow faster.

There is a link between building a business and losing weight.. I wrote a blog yesterday about how effective is your plan, and realised that people starting a business and those attempting to lose weight faced some similar challenges. Namely discipline, action and goal setting.

Now goal setting is pretty obvious and was covered in yesterdays blog. Once you have set up goals then you need to take action and follow a plan, without action, you cannot expect success and your plan will failures

Taking the first step is probably the hardest, but once that is behind you, you need to be disciplined enough to set up a routine. Getting into a regular routine makes things much easier, be it writing a blog, contacting people or remembering to follow your diet plan.

I am a morning person so like to get up around 0500 and in fact my body clock wakes me up at this time, no matter what time I go to bed. For me this is a good time, before the rest of the family get up I have time to check email accounts, my calendar and financial accounts and carry out tasks such as drafting blogs. I am at the moment in a state of change as my summer job is coming to an end and I will be concentrating on building my online business.

Change can be difficult and I know I face challenges until I can settle into a new routine and there is always the temptation to step back into your old ways, which will result in failure. I find that using Google Calendar as a tool, it will send me reminders about when I need to publish blogs or contact people and this has become a vital tool to help me get back on track.

When I was last working online full time I set aside half my day for business from 0500 to midday, during this time I worked in my own office space upstairs and the family knew not to interrupt me. This worked well for me and I was able to publish blogs on a daily basis and keep in regular contact with potential customers. Now my circumstances are slightly different, I live in a smaller house and my office consists of a desk in a corner of a dining room in the centre of our house which is a thoroughfare for my family, which makes it harder to concentrate with the job in hand. The only saving grace is my wife works part time shifts and my son is at school , so I can still work weekday mornings between 0730 to midday.

The secret of building a business or losing weight is to take action on a daily basis, which takes you towards your goal

This is the age of the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are people who have a dream and are prepared calculated risks to achieve their goals. Interest rates are at an all time low, which makes it a great time to borrow money, however spare a thought for savers, some of whom rely on their saving and try to live on the interest.

I have been looking around on the internet for the best savings rates and the best I can find is 10% per annum, with others around 3-7%, but saver rates are continuing to fall

The average UK adult has about £5,500 – 6,000 in saving to meet rainy day, so you can see that even with the best savings rate their saving will only produce an income of £500- 600 per year

If you borrow money you will see offers of interest rates of between 3.1-3.5% APR which on paper could mean that you could borrow money at 3.1% and place it in a saving account at 10% and earn just under 7%. However when you apply for one of these low APR loans the APR Jumps to around 22% if for example you wanted to borrow £1000 for a year. It is only larger sums over longer periods that offer low APR rates and the lender may need more security.

I have been tracking one of my own savings account and seeing interest payments of £1 per month coming in which is not very impressive and wondered if there way another way to use my saving and improve my rate of return.

Entrepreneurs are known for Buying low and selling high and then a friend of mine introduced me to Valentus an MLM company which sells Weight Loss Coffee. MLM’s have a bad reputation for selling over priced products and encouraging you to sell them on to friends and family.

I have lost money with MLM in the past, leaving me with product that I had to sell at a loss. The weight loss coffee is different and you can sell it online and earn a profit. I decided to test the market and used money from my savings and brought 16 boxes of coffee and was some what amazed when they sold online in the first month.

MLM companies offer a number of ways of earning money apart from selling products, although I believe customers are more important. There are additional rewards for introducing like minded people and that is the stage I have now come to. I am reaching out to duplicate my success with other people who want to see their money working for them and producing a return.

No matter your past experience, I am willing to work with you and help you build your future,

America has spoken and elected a non political businessman to lead their country, this could have great repercussions around the world. As Donald Trump said in his victory speech, “No dream is too big”

Running a country is a big business so it will be interesting to see just how things work out. I am sure we will see many changes, now that Republicans rule the roost at all level of Government, which will allow changes to be made with little opposition.

The UK is also facing changes and it will be interesting to see what changes might occur in the so called special relationship, as both countries set out to build new relationship with countries around the world.

Entrepreneurs are known for their tenacity and this has been proved over the past 18 months when Donald Trump has come from nowhere to become President elect of the USA.

Any dreams can be accomplished, if you are prepared to put in the effort and work every day towards achieving your goal. Donald Trump admitted it had been a long hard and sometimes tiring campaign but he kept his faith and concentration when others had doubt.

As this year is coming towards and end and a new dawn is coming it time for everyone to review their hopes and dreams. Do you have a dream to to improve your financial situation, then now is the time to act.

Yesterday was expected to be decision day for my son, regarding impending Surgery, to deal with his brain tumour. Having a consultant based in London when you live in Manchester adds to the challenge. So I arranged to pick him up and travel with him by car to London.

I set off home in Bolsover just before 0700, with an estimated journey time to Manchester of two hours. I had allowed extra time due to possible ice conditions passing over the Pennines. Weather was not however a problem but Monday morning traffic heading to Manchester was with Long queue, so the journey extended to two and half hours.

I picked up Stephane and after a couple of false starts getting orientated with the GPS on my phone we were heading South. My plan was to travel down the M6 and then turn off onto the A50 and join the M1, however, however when Stephane was checking his phone is showed two blockages on the route. Then Traffic news confirmed the Junction off the M6 was closed, so we reverted to plan B and took the M6 Toll road. We needed to catch the 1407 train at Milton Keynes to travel into London. News then came in to say that trains between Milton Keynes and London were being delayed for 30 minutes due to an Accident in the morning.

We started to panic as we had a tight schedule and did not expect delays. By this time we knew we would arrive at Milton Keynes park and ride, early so decided to get top the rail station as fast as possible, so that if trains were still be delayed we could catch an Earlier one, but we would need to buy new tickets.

As things turned out our planned train was due to arrive on time. So panic over. Once again we got a little lost orientating our selves but finally arrived in good time at the Neurological hospital. We had to wait some 30 minutes for Stephan’s consultant to see us. The Consultant showed us Stephane’s previous MRI scans and explained that the tumour was touching his brain stem and there is a high risk of further damaging the optic nerve. I would seem that Proton therapy is not an option at the moment wlist the tumour is so close to brain stem as it would damage the brain stem.

The consultant asked Stephane if he was ready to commit to surgery Stephane replied by saying that his sight was very important and he would only risk damaging his sight if it was necessary. The Consultant examined his eyes and made notes about his existing restricted fields of vision. We had some discussions and it became apparent that another MRI scan would be needed to see if there had been any change with the tumour, If the tumour is not growing it may be possible to delay operating and instead try radio therapy as an option. If the tumour is growing them probably an operation would be required earlier.

Unlike Stephane’s previous consultant, his new one is prepared to operate, but warned that he needs to see what kind of tissue the tumour is made up from and this can only be discovered by an exploratory procedure which may result it in one of two outcomes, backing out of the procedure to avoid further damage or completion which might open the door for future proton therapy..

Whilst we we there, he arranged a blood test and we tried to see is the MRI machine was available later in the evening, as it was not, we turned to plan B and are arranging an MRI Scan in the coming weeks to be completed in the morning with a consultation later in the day to plan the way ahead,

The slow progress is a little disappointing and will mean another trip to London before matters can be resolved. We left London during the rush hour by train and were concerned about the amount of traffic leaving Milton Keynes, however as it turns out little was going North so it took some one and half hours to drive home to Bolsover.

We had been on the move all day apart from grabbing a Subway sandwich at the station and so we went out for an evening meal and a pint at 2100 hour.

Stephane stayed overnight and I drove him home this morning and we are now awaiting an update from the Hospital

I have been a distributor with Valentus since July of this year and have sold a minimum of 16 boxes of diet coffee every month at a small profit.

Now you might ask so what is the big deal. Well Valentus is an MLM company and members of MLM’s usually end up purchasing product to maintain ranking qualifications and are then unable to sell the products because they are worth less on the open market (Ebay, Amazon and the like) than it costs for the distributor to buy, with the result that products gather dust in cupboards and garages around the world and budding Entrepreneurs become disillusioned and give up on their dreams.

MLM’s have a bad name in the marketing industry both for overpriced products and advice to new distributors to sell the products to friends and family. I have sold to hundreds of customers who I have never met and never approached my family and friends.

To my knowledge Valentus is the only company where the distributor price is below the open market value. I live in the UK where due to Brexit the Pound has fallen some 20% against the Dollar, this has effected my profit. However in other markets such as the USA there is still a good profit to be made.

Interest rates around the world are at an all time low with the result that saving money in banks is not going to produce a worthwhile return. I have discovered that rather than leaving £500 sitting in my savings account, where it earns pennies a month, it is better to buy and distribute coffee where it earns Pounds.

Having a product (Coffee) that many people drink every day, which also helps to reduce weight, which in the western world is a growing problem and effecting many people health, provides a huge market place, which will never become saturated.

Retail profit is only part of the income available from the Valentus Business.

I joined Valentus at business builder level committing to purchase 16 boxes of coffee a month, having proved to myself that the business works and is viable I am now looking to expand over the winter and invite interested people to follow my example and start to take control of their future.

I am looking for a total of ten people who can afford to rotate £500 a month which will qualify them at Ruby level once they start sharing the opportunity with at least tow people.

The reason I am doing this is due to Compensation plan which rewards people, who build the business. I believe that customers initially are more important than distributors as without customers you have no business, however having distributors brings in greater rewards.

You can find out more details by watching the video one at http://seriouswealth.net , I have not been recruiting earlier because I need to ensure the system worked and I had no time available to help people get started with a new business.

I have been working part time in the UK for the past eight months, after a gap of some 15 years whilst living abroad. Finding work was a bit of a challenge, due to my age. There are a few companies that employ pensioners, however I was seeking an active outdoor job having formally been a sailing Instructor. I was interviewed for a water-sports vacancy, which would have been ideal but heard nothing and then I saw an advert for Go Ape Instructors in Sherwood Forest. I love teaching and sharing knowledge and being a former adventure racer saw the possibilities. After attending a half-day group interview, I was selected for training. I had some concerns as the supervisors were younger than me and fellow trainees might be fitter but as it turned out, my knowledge, adaptability and work ethics resulted in and employment offer..

Some fellow instructors did not know quite what to make of me and would step in and offer to help to assist me and I would stand aside, but as time went on I realised I was more than their equal in some areas and even in the physically activity of climbing zip lines I could hold my own.

I have always been the type of person who is reliable and on time and will look for jobs to do rather than stand around doing nothing. Looking after customers safety on the treetops course is paramount and on many occasions customers need encouragement to complete some challenges on the course. One thing I am good at is pushing people to their limits. Throughout the season, I helped many people overcome their fear of heights, with only one or two not being able to overcome their fears.

I ended up working a number of extra days as a result of people missing shifts, this was great for me. The company distribute a simple spreadsheet which show the start times or days that instructors are required to work, but often people forget to check with the result that those on shift have to work harder to cover the shortfall. This to me is a new phenomenon and I cannot remember this occurring in the past. When working work should come first, otherwise how else can you pay your way in life.

I will be working weekend only for the next month finally ending my contract on the first weekend in December and I hope that I will be invited back for a new contract next year.

Rather than sitting around during the winter, I am turning my attention back to my online business, which involves selling Diet Coffee. The product is excellent for people who love coffee and want to lose weight, just by replacing the coffee they current drink with another brand. ! have sold over 100 boxes since July.